'Where Do We Go Now?' review: A quirky take on sectarian strife

View full sizeRudy Bou Chebel/Sony Pictures Classics Center: Nadine Labaki as Amale in WHERE DO WE GO NOW?

The success and wide distribution of actress-director Nadine Labaki's first feature, 2007's "Caramel," made her Lebanon's most visible filmmaker and one of the Middle East's most prominent female directors.

Her newest effort -- "Where Do We Go Now?" -- is a quirky, scattered but soulful and ultimately endearing jumble of musical comedy, tragedy and satire about the uneasy coexistence of Lebanon's Christians and Muslims and the pain of women who have lost too many husbands, brothers and sons to religious-spurred violence.

The story takes place in a remote mountain village where TV reception is poor and women of both faiths, along with the avuncular local priest and imam, go to comical lengths to keep the easily inflamed menfolk ignorant of the religious strife in the rest of the country.

Peace is preserved for a while among these people who talk alike, generally look alike and have the same cultural customs and daily habits. Christian widow Amale (Labaki herself) even has a new romance smoldering with a hunky Muslim plastering the walls of her bakery. But little incidents in town, followed by a terrible one outside of it, force the women to bake their wackiest scheme yet, involving large quantities of hashish and imported Russian strippers.

Labaki's use of abrupt tonal shifts can be jarring, but her narrative is ambitious and anything but typical. In the pointed final scenes, she suggests something quite daring for a region long riven by faith-based conflict: The actual differences between Christians and Muslims are largely arbitrary, even irrelevant, so isn't it absurd to kill each other over how each group relates to God?